One gets so used to one's own horrors, one forgets how they must seem to other people.
Diane SetterfieldI know there are people who don't read fiction at all, and I find it hard to understand how they can bear to be inside the same head all the time.
Diane SetterfieldAll morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.
Diane SetterfieldOur clients' faces, with the customary outward paleness and inner glow of the book lover.
Diane SetterfieldTo anyone who took the trouble to look, I was plainly visible, but when people are expecting to see nothing, that is usually what they see.
Diane SetterfieldThere is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.
Diane Setterfield